The Party in the Paste
by CaptainB22
Summary: Multiple bodies found in a concrete mixer, one still alive. The team needs answers from the living this time, not just the dead. So they turn to Sweets.
1. Chapter 1

"Sweets, you're coming with me." Booth gestured impatiently with a manila folder toward Lance sipping his coffee.

"What? What are you talking about? I have a pile of case files on my desk that I'm supposed to be reviewing! Seems like everyone in the Bureau now needs me to put together psych profiles. I mean, some of these are kindergarten level. Anyone could put a profile together on these people. I was reading one file where-"

"Yup, don't care. Here's your new priority." Booth slapped the folder onto Lance's chest. "Remains found in a concrete mixer. We're talking lots of remains. Multiple bodies. Ripped apart by the mixer's rotation, not to mention all coated in cement."

"Are you sure it's murder? I need a little more to go on to build a profile for a murderer. For instance, proof that this was a murder." Lance got into the elevator with Booth, still holding his coffee cup. "At this stage, I think Dr. Brennan is far more needed than I am."

Booth punched the elevator button. "Oh, you're not profiling the murderer. You're profiling one of the victims."

Lance wrinkled his brow. "Yeah, I'm totally confused here."

Booth gave him a sidelong glance. "One of the victims is a woman. And she was found alive." He opened the door for Lance as they exited the building.

Lance shrugged and shook his head. "Still not seeing why it's imperative for me to enter the investigation now." He took a sip of his coffee while getting into Booth's SUV. "Are you just tired of interrogations now?"

Sunglasses on, Booth started the car. Lance opened his mouth to remind him to put on his seatbelt, then thought better of it. Booth never wore his seatbelt. For being the law, Booth sure does like to feel above it, Lance thought.

"The woman, found in the concrete mixer, doesn't speak English. We need you to do your shrinky stuff and figure out all the nuances in her speech that we're not getting by using an interpreter."

Lance settled back into his seat and considered this. It was a challenge, for sure. He'd have to infer more than usual from emotions and gestures. He could also get the entire conversation recorded, then analyze the speech patterns, see which words are repeated and if they have any special relationship to each other. He looked over at Booth and shook his head. Those case files would just have to continue piling up on his desk. "All right, I'll do it."

Booth chuckled and punched him playfully on the shoulder. "See, I knew you'd want it!"

Rubbing his shoulder, Lance nodded. While most of the cases that the FBI had to consult with the Jeffersonian on were interesting, this one was especially fascinating to him. Since his breakup with Daisy and subsequent fling with Agent Sparling had ended sourly, he definitely required some distraction from his romantic woes.

Booth and Lance were greeted at the Jeffersonian by the sight of five people on the dais clustered around a table where a woman sat, covered in blood and bone fragments. There was a sixth person who Lance assumed was the interpreter; she was standing apart from the group looking nauseated. As they approached she spoke.

"Listen, I'm not going to be much help here. She's speaking indigenous languages from South America. And different dialects of them. I'm just from the linguists department; I'm not fluent in these languages. I do etymology, not this." She placed her hand on the railing and sighed heavily as Cam removed a section of spleen from the woman's shoulder with an audible squishing sound. Booth rolled his eyes.

"Well, we just need you to interpret, right? You can do that?"

The woman glanced toward the table. "You'll get the same results from me as you would an online translator. I can't put together grammar and meanings when someone's using obscene dialects! Hardly anybody speaks these languages anymore, much less combines dialects from completely different regions. If you want to fly residents of tiny Chilean villages up to D.C., I will gladly help you translate."

Hodgins looked up from a petri dish that to Lance appeared to be empty, but he was sure there was some microscopic slime in it. "We can record her voice, then run in through an online translator. Or multiple online translators."

Angela nodded. "It's not going to be perfect, but we'll get the gist."

"Which is the same thing I would do. Excuse me, I'm going to go study ancient Greek phonemes now." The interpreter practically ran down the stairs.

Booth threw his hands up. "All right, can we get this translator up and running now?"

While everyone turned toward the monitors to discuss how to set up the program, Lance took the opportunity to walk up to the woman. She had not said a single word since he arrived. Her expression was blank, yet he got the impression she was in some type of pain. Whether physical or emotional, he couldn't tell. She was attractive, with large green eyes and chocolate brown hair. Her nose was slightly bigger than what most people would consider attractive, but the rest of her face was so symmetrical that her nose just made her interesting. Her clothes, from what he could tell underneath the remains that covered her, were well-made, her trousers tailored. She wasn't hard up for cash, that was for sure. He peered at her wrists closely. Just below her sleeves, he could see marks on her arms that could only be tattoos. He straightened, attempting to profile her in his head. Expensive, professional clothing, but tattooed as much as an inmate. Adding that to her almost unsettling calm, this was a woman he wanted to know more about.

"Hi." Lance frowned. Brilliant psychologist, consultant for the FBI, and all he can come up with is 'hi.' "I'm Dr. Lance Sweets, I'm a psychologist with the FBI." He held up his credentials, thinking maybe seeing it would help her connect the words with what he was saying.

"_Hola_."

He tried to contain himself. She was speaking Spanish now. They could handle Spanish. He could handle Spanish.

"Um, okay, it's been a while since my last Spanish class, so bear with me. _Me llamo Doctor Lance Sweets. ¿Cuál es tu nombre?_" He briefly wondered if he should have used the formal form.

"_¿Puedo estar limpio?_"

From behind him, he heard a computer voice. "Can I get clean?"

Everyone turned back to look at Lance and the woman. Brennan and Cam both hurried to her side to continue picking off the remains. Booth grinned. "So this just got a lot easier. Sweets, if you want to go back and work on all your cases, be my guest. I'll call you if we need anything."

Lance tore his gaze away from the woman's eyes, staring at him hopefully. "No, no. I think I'll stick around. You can always use my help, even if you don't want to admit it."

Booth clapped his hands and rubbed them together. "All right, let's do this."

Lance rubbed his chin as he watched the woman being led away to be x-rayed. The case was intriguing enough, with someone using a concrete mixer as a body dump. But did they intend for this woman to be murdered as well? If so, they had made a big mistake. The Jeffersonian team can figure out a lot with human remains, but sometimes, it's the living that hold the final clue.


	2. Chapter 2

Lance observed the scene at the Jeffersonian calmly as he waited for the chance to talk to the woman. There were still chunks of concrete adhered to some body parts that Arastoo was working on dislodging. Brennan was with Booth, they found the company that owned the concrete mixer and were headed out to talk to the owner. Apparently the driver was the one who found the bodies after checking in at a weigh station on the expressway and coming in far underweight. He wondered briefly if the company had security cameras outside. That would make the job far too easy. He glanced at his phone and decided to wait in his office. He was feeling foolish standing around with everyone working. Obviously he could be talking to the woman while Cam picked all the body parts off her, but something told him that she would not be responsive. Something told him that coming across as an impatient, blustering cop would not help in this situation. Perhaps it was his psychological mojo, as Booth might say.

Almost as soon as Lance stepped into his office his cell phone rang.

"Dr. Sweets."

"Sweets, I'm coming to pick you up. I need you for an interrogation."

Lance threw his hands up. "Aren't you with Dr. Brennan?"

"Yeah she's gotta get back to the Jeffersonian to look at some bones they cleaned. This one might need a more delicate touch, which is why I called you."

"All right." Lance hung up.

Once inside Booth's vehicle, he found Booth on the phone with the Jeffersonian. Hodgins had found particulates on the bodies belonging to the Eastern Prairie Fringed Orchid. A rare wildflower. So rare that the only place in the area where it grows was next to a small airport. It was a small airport; only single-engine planes and helicopters could fly in there. Also it hadn't been used in three years. The only people who went there were botanists who cared for the wildflowers. Lance turned to Booth after the phone call ended and asked why he was needed to go visit an abandoned airport.

"It's not the airport we're going to visit, it's the trailer park across the street. This park is the only residential place for miles. You see, a manufacturing plant closed down five years ago, and mostly everyone moved."

Lance nodded. "Except for the people who couldn't afford it. The ones living in the trailer park."

Booth snapped his fingers. "Exactly. So we've got to knock on a few doors and figure out if someone saw something. Because there's no way those wildflowers could get into that cement unless the killer was at this airport at some point."

"Concrete," Lance said absentmindedly.

"What?"

"Oh, well, cement is an ingredient in concrete. The flowers were found in the concrete, not the cement."

Booth shook his head. "Yeah, okay, concrete, cement, they're the same thing."

Lance thought about arguing back, then decided against. "Yeah, sure, totally."

Pulling into the airport, Booth pointed out tire tracks.

"I know the squints will want to measure each track before determining if it's the same treads as the mixer where we found the bodies, but I'm gonna say that those tracks look like they belong to that mixer."

Lance nodded. They drove across the landing strips, following the tracks. They led across the landing strips, up to a river. Then the marks were gone. After getting out of the vehicle and walking around, Lance found the wildflowers that Hodgins was so excited about.

"Well, those botanists are not going to be happy about this." Lance gestured to the trampled flowers.

Booth shook his head. "No, they are not. But the squints will be." He texted the Jeffersonian to tell them to send a team out. "Well, let's go talk to the trailer park."

After speaking to everyone at each mobile home that faced the airport, Booth and Lance were at a dead end. Nobody had seen anything.

Booth kicked at a flattened basketball in the road at they walked back to Booth's SUV. "Nothin'," Booth declared. "How can someone not hear a cement mixer barreling through?"

Lance shrugged. "Well, most of the people here work third shift. I'm going to assume whoever stole the truck to put the bodies in thought it would be best to operate at night. So most of these people weren't even home. And I think a few that we spoke to were definitely drug addicts, completely non-reliable sources. Maybe the killer knew that." He paused as they walked up to the vehicle. "Hey, wait a second. Look. All the trailers here are directly behind the ones next to the road. Except for that one." He pointed. "That one is in between, so they might have seen something."  
"It's worth a look." Booth turned and walked toward the trailer.

The girl who answered the door looked young. Booth introduced himself and Lance and explained why they were there.

"Yeah, I did see the big truck there a few days ago. When it pulled out the headlights shone right into my bedroom and woke me up."

Booth and Lance looked at each other.

"Do you remember the exact day and time?" Booth asked.

The girl cocked her head to the side. "Let's see. It must have been Tuesday night, because I have to wake up early for a class on Wednesday, and I was so mad that the lights woke me up. Around five a.m. I think."

Booth and Lance thanked her and began walking back to the vehicle.

"Wednesday at five a.m. the mixer pulled out. I think we can assume that was after the murders occurred." Booth sighed. "We don't have time of death yet, but at least now we know it was probably before the truck pulled out of this airport."

Lance smiled. "Right, but we still need the team at the Jeffersonian to gather evidence that the bodies were even here. Right now we only know the truck was."

"You know, the concrete company never reported a stolen mixer. That means the killer was able to take it and return it without anyone noticing," Booth said.

"Unless the killer is the driver, and he was supposed to be out on a normal job," Lance replied.

"Yeah," Booth agreed.

"There's one thing that been bothering me, since we discovered those tracks." Lance rubbed his chin. "If the killer was trying to dispose of the bodies by putting them in concrete, why go through all the trouble of using a concrete mixer? Why not just lay the concrete down himself?"

Booth nodded and stared off into space for a minute. "Because he didn't want to dispose of the bodies. He wanted them to be found."

Lance wrinkled his forehead. "So the woman found alive, that wasn't a mistake. That was intentional. This killer is sending a message to someone."

Booth clapped Lance on the shoulder. "Told you you'd want this case!"

Lance nodded. "Yeah, and now I've really got to talk to the woman."


End file.
